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Again the basil just keeps growing and I am left with a never-ending supply. This time I decided to make a caprese salad which only uses three main ingredients, basil, bocconcini and tomato. 2/3 of the ingredients could easily come from your garden and that is why I love this salad. Unfortunately my tomatoes were not ready for harvesting just yet.

There is no need for a recipe, simply cut the tomato and bocconcini to your liking. Then assemble and drizzling with olive oil. Lastly sprinkle with salt & pepper to taste.

For more flavour drizzle balsamic dressing over the caprese salad. Enjoy on crispy bread or by itself, its good either way.

As soon as my basil plants start to flower I prune them back to ensure it keeps producing more leaves. In doing so, I am left with an excess load of basil. So I decided to make a basil pesto following Jamie Oliver’s Recipe. This recipe is different from the usual and involves using a mortar and pestle instead of a food processor. This method does involve more time and effort but the end result is worth it.

The basic ingredients for a basil pesto involves the following:

Basil

Pine Nuts or Almonds (toasted)

Garlic

Parmesan Chesse

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Lemon Juice

Salt and Pepper

Adding lemon juice is optional but I always add it to my pesto as it balances out the strong flavour of Extra Virgin Olive oil. I usually just play around with the above ingredients until it reaches my desired taste.

In comparison to making pesto in a food processor the end result is much more flavoursome (afterall you are crushing all the basil by hand) and you won’t be left with a mushy basil pesto at all.

If you want to try something new, I would recommend trying this method to make your next basil pesto. Your feedback is always welcomed.

When you tend to your little veggies and watch them grow daily they start to become your babies. The excitement you feel when you see a little green stalk sprout is indescribable. This excitement is heightened when you see your first edible thing no matter how big it is. So you can imagine how emotional I get when I see my plants are dying.

My gardening partner without my consent decided to transplant some carrots after seeing they were very bunched together. Thank god he didn’t transplant all of them. They seemed to be doing alright in the evening however the next day the green tops of the carrots had wilted and they weren’t looking very happy.

The truth is carrots don’t like to be moved. It is preferred carrots are seeded and not transplanted. If transplanted they are likely to developed forked roots if not transplanted well. Personally, I avoid transplanting them mainly because of the Australian Sun. However if your in a cooler climate I would give transplanting a try. After all experimenting is the key to success in any garden.

Thinning Carrots

The best thing to do is let them grow until they reach a reasonable size and then thin them. To thin, hold the plant at soil level and firmly remove the entire plant from the soil. Then mound more soil around the roots you don’t want to leave the tops of the carrots (the orange parts) exposed to sunlight. Remove the weakest ones first then those sneaky ones that are growing right on top of each other.

I will have to keep you updated on whether or not those transplanted carrots survive in the heat and looking at those photos I probably need to do some more thinning. Feel free to subscribe to my blog if you enjoyed reading this post.

When your basil starts to resemble a bush you know its time for pruning but with pruning comes an excess supply of fresh basil and the question remains, what should i do with this. In the end you have a choice of pestoing it, freezing it, preserving it, adding it to a pasta sauce or using it to garnish a dish.

When the idea of Basil Oil popped up I thought it would be extremely difficult and the tutorials on youtube showed ice baths, straining it through a dish cloth and all sorts of difficult things. The end result was slightly too green for me so i decided to google Basil INFUSED Olive oil. After reading several websites I decided I was ready to start after what did i have to lose? A few basil leaves?

I decided to chop all the basil by hand because i didn’t want it to become mush in the food processor. I heated a basil olive oil mixture then allowed it too cool and sit. Then I strained the mixture into a jar.

However it wasn’t so simple.. there is always havoc in the kitchen and a little accident caused water to be splashed into the olive oil causing it to be slightly ruined. This of course did provoke some unhappy actions but once strained the olive oil looked and smelt like Basil Infused Olive Oil.

Basil Infused Olive Oil

3 cups of Basil

2 cups of Olive Oil

Method

Wash and Dry basil throughly

Finely chop up the basil

Pour the Olive Oil into a pan at the basil and heat on medium heat

Allow heat and reach a simmer (not boil) for 5 mins

Remove from heat and leave to infuse for at least 1hr

Transfer mixture into a jar using a mesh to catch the basil

The end result is a very delicate Basil Infused Olive Oil. I would like to try some other methods to make a strong Basil infused Olive Oil but thats for another day.